


A Danish Debacle

by ughasif



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Literati, Mentions of Jess/Shane, Mentions of Rory/Dean, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughasif/pseuds/ughasif
Summary: Rory goes to Jess after a fight with Dean. Pastries, sexual tension and Charlotte Brontë references ensue.





	A Danish Debacle

_ I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep. _

The lights of Luke’s diner enter her vision, charged with a familiarity that calms her even while the sight of a lone Jess through the window fills her stomach with a tingling anticipation. It’s 10:50 PM. Most of Stars Hollow is asleep or on its way there, and normally, she would be too. 

Rory picks up her pace, stepping carefully around puddles. She thinks about a sticky sweet Danish washed down with Jess’s coffee while he glances over her in the way that makes her forget Dean exists while he’s sitting right next to her. Maybe he’ll be angry still, maybe he won’t say a word, maybe he’ll mock her, maybe he’ll call Shane and say whatever dirty things he says to her for Rory to hear and agonise over. Although she recognises in a moment of rare self-awareness that she might feel just as much pleasure as she does pain. 

The door to the diner swings open under Rory’s light touch and Jess looks up. He’s wiping down the counter, on which a copy of _ Villette _ rests, a pencil stuck inside it. For a second, she feels the urge to ask him how he would compare _ Villette _ and _ Jane Eyre _. Then she notices the antagonistic glint in his eye, the tightening of his fingers on the cloth he holds. She can’t pretend that she doesn’t enjoy Jess when he stands up to her for the way she treated him; he thinks she can take it and she has learnt to agree. But she knows better than to bring books up now. 

“A coffee and a Danish, please.” Her voice comes out more timid than she would like. She sits down on a stool, neither too far away from him nor too close. 

“Sure thing, princess,” he says and this is him _ mocking _her but Rory can’t fight a blush. Jess looks at her a little longer than he needs to, taking it in. 

She counts glazed donuts and muffins and slices of peach pie while he gets her food. He sets it down in front of her all packed up, and she blinks and looks straight at him out of surprise. “I didn’t ask for this to go,” she says. 

There’s a pause and she realises belatedly that he’s waiting for an explanation because she isn’t supposed to want to be alone with him. “Coffee tastes better in a real cup,” she throws out lamely. She suppresses the urge to make up a bizarre explanation for why; this is Jess, not her mother, and they aren’t talking, certainly not bantering. 

Jess shrugs and mutters something about nutty Gilmores. He takes the bag away and returns her food the way she wants it. Rory watches him pour her coffee, her eyes straying to the tense muscles in his forearms. The aroma of coffee wafting towards her combines with Jess’s proximity and a sudden roll of thunder she flinches at. She feels exposed, strangely captivated; she feels like writing a poem and slipping it in _ Villette _ when Jess isn’t looking. She has never wanted to write poetry before. It’s stingingly unfair to Dean. 

Rory takes her first sip of the coffee and makes eye contact with Jess. He hasn’t moved away yet. His arms are planted wide apart on the counter, one hand curled around the handle of the coffee-pot. She would have to mention his hands in a poem like that. And his bitter coffee. He’s put one sugar in it when he knows that she takes two. She removes the cup from her mouth and flicks her tongue across her wet bottom lip. 

Jess keeps looking at her and she thinks he’s even angrier with her now. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks curtly. 

“What do you mean?” She says and her voice wobbles a little. 

“Cut to the chase, Gilmore.” His voice holds mostly frustration but she answers him for the faint note of concern. 

“I had a fight with—my mom,” she responds, looking down at her pastry. She spears a piece on her fork and eats it, continuing to look down. 

“Which is code for ‘I had a fight with Dean’.” 

“Jess,” she says, desperate now. “Please don’t leave.” 

“I’m not going anywhere until I’m done closing the diner. Luke makes sure of that.” 

“Coffee doesn’t taste any different in a real cup.” 

“The non-sequiturs are better left in your lit class,” he tells her unkindly. 

Neither of them say anything for a moment. Rory’s heart is racing. She doesn’t have any idea how to say what she wants to say. She barely knows if she wants to say it at all, but she swallows her mortification and plunges in.

“I’m not going to—to try you kiss you again, Jess—“ 

“So now you’ll talk about it.”

He’s so not making this easy. “I just want to be with you,” Rory says quietly. “You make me feel—“ _ Confused. Furious at myself. Out-of-control. The way people in books feel. _“Free.” 

“Huh,” Jess rejoins. 

“‘Huh?’” Rory risks a glance at him. 

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she finishes her Danish. The rain pounds against the windows and the pastry melts in her mouth. With the promise she’s just made to him, she shouldn’t be thinking about how Jess would enjoy the taste if he kissed her right now.

“What do you have to feel free from?” His voice is sharp again when he speaks. 

“Just...” She shifts on her stool, knowing she shouldn’t be talking about this with him. “Dean can be scary when he calls, and calls, and calls some more. And when he yells.” 

“Dean’s a jerk,” he tells her flatly. 

Rory flares with a familiar indignance but when she opens her mouth to defend her boyfriend, Jess presses a finger against her lips. “Just shut up.” 

She glares but acquiesces. He takes his finger away and nods at her coffee. “Finish that.” There’s an unspoken promise behind his words. 

She picks up the cup and drains it while he takes her plate away and turns the lights out. The rain is waning when he takes her wrist and leads her out of the diner. It’s so dark that it thrills her, to be out here with him, in the temporary refuge of their aloneness. 

“Where are we going?” Rory asks, falling into his side. 

Jess tenses for a second but then slings his arm around her and pulls her under the shelter of the shops. “You’ll find out,” he says irritatingly. 

He takes her to the bridge. They settle down next to each other and Rory remembers a picnic and Jess telling her Hemingway would have only lovely things to say about her. 

“How do you like _ Villette _?” He turns toward her and she quotes before he can answer: “‘His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss’.” 

“I believe you are a changeling, Miss Gilmore,” he returns. “You are a perfect cabinet of oddities.” 

Rory laughs up at him and Jess accepts that, whether or not they’re together, she will always sweeten his lot even while she embitters it. 

END.


End file.
